Wednesday, February 29, 2012

retro-quotes: a series of germane remarks, by others, plucked from all over the place, and from all over the time - #22

"Now, what purpose is served for contemporary man by the monumental consideration of the past, by busying himself with the classics and rarities of earlier times? He derives from that the fact that the greatness which was once there at all events once was possible and therefore will really be possible once again."

interesting piece at Ceasefire magazine by Andrew Fleming comparing Retromania and Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, 1966-1973 (ed. Larry Austin and Douglas Kahn), a book i have been meaning to pick up

Monday, February 13, 2012

starting February 16th I’m on tour, with events in Norway (Bergen Kunsthall; Oslo’s By:Larm festival), England (Critical Beats in London; Off the Page festival in Whitstable) and Paris (launch of the French edition of Retromania)

Critical Beats #3: Innovation and TraditionI’ll be joining Tony Herrington, Lisa Blanning and Steve Goodman for the third in a series of panel discussions co-hosted by The Wire and the University of East London and looking at aspects of electronic dance music and club culture as they manifest in East London and beyond. Mark Fisher was scheduled to participate but had to withdraw owing to circumstances beyond his control, so Lisa B has stepped in to replace.

The second annual Off the Page Festival: a weekend of panel discussions, screenings, talks, and debates on sound, music, and music criticism co-hosted by The Wire and Sound And Music, with contributions from Linder Sterling, Dave Tompkins, Jonny Trunk, Rob Young, Chris Cutler, Vicki Bennett, Gavin Bryars, Evan Parker, Kiran Sande, and others.

Saturday February 25: I’ll be giving a talk about the work of David Toop.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

retro-quotes: a series of germane remarks, by others, plucked from all over the place, and from all over the time - #21

"The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post-historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again."

--Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?" The National Interest, Summer 1989.

retro-quotes: a series of germane remarks, by others, plucked from all over the place, and from all over the time - #20

"The return to history everywhere remarked today… is not a return exactly, seeming rather to mean incorporating the 'raw material' of history and leaving its function out, a kind of flattening and appropriation"

-- Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 1991

"Two years ago, Built To Spill bassist and solo artist Brett Nelson decided to put his considerable musical talents up to a bit of a challenge:

"I truly love bands like Talk Talk, Men Without Hats, and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, but I also love bands like Dinosaur Jr., The Replacements, and The Pixies. So what if I merged my two loves together?"

The answer to that question, initially, was the first release by The Electronic Anthology Project, an EP that took seven songs from the Built To Spill catalog and reimagined them as '80s synth pop classics. Utilizing a variety of vintage 80’s synthesizers and drum machines, the project shimmered with an authentic sheen. And rather than rely on the cut-and-paste ease of modern recording software, he records all the melody lines into his computer using as many takes as needed to get it right. "If I can't play it straight all the way through without screwing up," he says, "then it's not used." And the whole experiment was delightfully topped off with newly recorded vocal tracks from BTS front man, Doug Martsch.

Although dismissed by some reviewers as a "goof," Nelson took to the task with great sincerity and the resulting songs bridged the two seemingly separate worlds with bubbly charm and grin-inducing levity.

At the time of the first EAP release, Nelson promised that he would be back with more. And true to his word comes the latest installment in this project: The Electronic Anthology Project of Dinosaur Jr.

To be released on Record Store Day (April 21st, 2012) in a limited edition of 500 purple vinyl copies (with digital, cd and standard vinyl to follow), the new edition of The Electronic Anthology Project takes nine songs from Dinosaur Jr. and brings out the new wave influences that were always hiding among the acid-dripping guitar solos and fervent rhythms.

The blast of "Little Fury Things" (from Dinosaur Jr.'s breakthrough 1987 LP You're Living All Over Me) is given a new life thanks to a throbbing Devo-like pulse. One of the band's most underrated songs from their Sire years, "Feel The Pain," sounds even more wistful when lost in the swell of glistening synth melodies and a knotty bed of programmed beats that would make The Human League proud.

True to form, Nelson called on Dinosaur Jr. leader J. Mascis to record all new vocal tracks for each song here. Wrenched free from the volume and intensity of his band, the heartfelt side of Mascis's lyrics and sober delivery are given the spotlight's full glare and, as a result, shine even brighter.

Lest you think even after two volumes of the Electronic Anthology Project that Nelson is done, he has a long wish list of bands he'd love to make future EAP projects with including the likes of The Pixies and Sebadoh. If the previous two editions of EAP are any indication, they are sure to be eccentric, tuneful, and in heavy rotation on your home stereo."

"I'd like to suggest you this italian band called Calibro 35. I think that they could be the perfect italian example of hauntology, much more than anyone else: these people from Milan are obssessed with production music from the '70s, especially with b-movies soundtracks mixing funk, jazz and new-wave. It's our golden era, when italian movies were famous all over the world, and when society went through great changes. Innovations, creations, "modernism", if you like.

"When you hear their music it's like watching those films, and they made you wonder about those incredible years in Italy. They re-create the exact atmosphere of that moment.

"Here's a video they made.

"The song is a cover of 'L'appuntamento' written by Bruno Lauzi and originally sung by Ornella Vanoni."

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

seen this on second-hand shelves for decades but was moved to pick it up only recently... out of a mix of curiosity and solidarity ("New Music"... yes the concept did in fact exist in common parlance, people didn't in fact believe that "music has always been about recycling", they thought it could and would and was going into uncharted territory in a multitude of directions)... a mine of information this (obscure labels, cassette-only releases) as well as an attempt at aesthetic map-making... mandatory bedside reading for D. Lopatin, S. Hauschildt, J. Elliott, M.McGuire and whoever Crystal Vibrations is, surely

starting February 16th I’m on tour, with events in Norway (Bergen Kunsthall; Oslo’s By:Larm festival), England (Critical Beats in London; Off the Page festival in Whitstable) and Paris (launch of the French edition of Retromania)

Critical Beats #3: Innovation and TraditionI’ll be joining Tony Herrington and Steve Goodman for the third in a series of panel discussions co-hosted by The Wire and the University of East London and looking at aspects of electronic dance music and club culture as they manifest in East London and beyond. Mark Fisher was scheduled to participate but has had to withdraw owing to circumstances beyond his control.

The second annual Off the Page Festival: a weekend of panel discussions, screenings, talks, and debates on sound, music, and music criticism co-hosted by The Wire and Sound And Music, with contributions from Linder Sterling, Dave Tompkins, Jonny Trunk, Rob Young, Chris Cutler, Vicki Bennett, Gavin Bryars, Evan Parker, Kiran Sande, and others.

Saturday February 25: I’ll be giving a talk about the work of David Toop.

this struck me as wonderfully nuanced assessment of where music is at: the bounty of harvesting a crop, or crops plural, that were sowed long ago

"Several of these collaborations produced exceptional, if unsurprising results. A lot of them were my favourite records to actually listen to. Again, this is unsurprising, given that we’re dealing with well-established projects and, well, middle-aged dudes and dudettes who’ve really nutted out their approaches to sound. This is why, fundamentally, I think of the best of these as culmination records, recordings that cash out a bunch of ideas that have been kicking around for the past decade or more. But/so: not that exciting, really. And also, you know, I really hope that each is kind of the ‘last one’ in its sequence or series. For the sake of transformation. Culmination, then conclusion, then... rip it up, and start again. To continue on these trajectories would be to court the trage-comedy of true repetition. Add in more time, and you’ll endup with farce, if Woody A is to be believed. But being careful, culminating collaborations between people who really, really know their shit, these records are also very satisfying, if you give them your full attention. Repeat: they are amazing to actually listen to."

the second good aspect of last year was mixtapes, and he provides some examples/links to favourites - a couple of which i'd heard and would also recommend highly -- Moon Wiring Club at FACT, Mark Van Hoen at Pontone. And I must have missed the Endless House Foundation one, i'll have to check that out and the others recommended.

Mixtapes = "a feast" as PC says, but then again since their provenance trawls so far and wide and so atemporally, you might say that they too are a banquet based in harvesting crops planted long ago

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Neil Young on his campaign for higher-fidelity digital sound and how he spoke with Steve Jobs about creating a format with 20 times the fidelity of files in the most current digital formats such as MP3

"The quality of the sound of music today--I don’t like it. It just makes me angry.

“Not the quality of the music. But we’re in the 21st century and we have the worst sound that we’ve ever had. It’s worse than a 78. Where are our geniuses? What happened?

"If you’re an artist and you created something and you knew the master was 100 percent great, but the consumer got 5 percent, would you be feeling good?I like to point that out to artists. That’s why people listen to music differently today.

"It’s all about the bottom and the beat driving everything, and that’s because in the resolution of the music, there’s nothing else you can really hear. The warmth and the depth at the high end is gone. It’s like Occupy Music — the 5 percent, that’s who we are now. We used to be the hundred percent!

"It's not that digital is bad or inferior, it's that the way it's being used isn't doing justice to the art . . . The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn't have to make that choice.

“Steve Jobs was a digital pioneer, but when he went home, he listened to vinyl.

"I talked to Steve about it. We were working on it. You've got to believe if he lived long enough he would eventually try to do what I'm trying to do.

“My goal is to try and rescue the art form that I’ve been practicing for the past 50 years. We live in the digital age, and unfortunately it’s degrading our music, not improving.

“The CD is over. But the album will never be dead.”

His proposed format would contain 100 percent of the data of music as recorded in the studio. Each song-file would be so big, it would take 30 minutes to download; a new portable playback device might hold just 30 albums. You would download overnight and...

"Sleep well. Wake up in the morning. Play some real music and listen to the joy of 100 percent of the sound of music"

A dream, I'm guessing: don't see people going into reverse in terms of the convenience of "want it NOW!!!" instant-access and ultrachoice (a whole, huge collection portable wherever you go).

Q: Obviously a tool is a tool and you can use it any way you want. It’s your choice to keep working on tape.

Yeah, I think there’s more to it than that. I don’t think you can unilaterally say anything like that. The digital systems — their history and evolution — is that they’re editing programs. All of their development has gone into making them more powerful and flexible in the manipulation of already recorded sound. The act of recording a sound, within the digital paradigm, is perceived as a solved problem. Once it gets in the box is where the magic happens. I feel that’s an inversion of the process. I think there’s more implied in digital recording than just the manner of storage. There’s a whole culture of manipulation that has developed. I don’t think it’s a neutral technology. I think it’s had a detrimental effect on music as a whole. I think it’s structurally dangerous to artists. They don’t have an option of not ceding their music to someone. It’s not value neutral. The reason that I’m in the chair as a professional is that someone is expected to trust me to make choices that won’t make them vulnerable. I feel that’s one of the problems with digital recording; there’s no disincentive to making someone vulnerable.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Thursday, February 2, 2012

BOOK NEWS

news about Retromania's foreign editions and the American first-time release of Energy Flash

Retromania

* the French translation is published by Le Mot et le Reste Éditions on February 9th as Rétromania: comment la culture pop recycle son passé pour s'inventer un futur. I will be in Paris for the launch 2/20 to 2/23, details about the presentation on 2/20 to follow soon.* the Spanish edition is being published in April by Caja Negra Editora as Retromanía: la adicción de la cultura pop a su propio pasado.

* the German edition is published in October by Ventil Verlag.

* in other Retromania news, the US edition has gone into its fourth printing, while the UK large-format edition, now sold out, has been replaced by the smaller, cheaper B-format with a new coverEnergy Flash

Energy Flash is issued in its expanded/updated form in America in May via Soft Skull. Because the original Generation Ecstasy was an abridged version of the UK edition, this is the first time it's been available here in its full-length form; it also has the 40 thousand extra words, covering developments in the 2000s, that were added to the UK-only 2008 anniversary edition. More information here and new about events TK.

"...in 2006, a writer and music-industry gadabout named Sarah Lewitinn-- more recognizably branded as Ultragrrrl-- posted a blog entry faking a claim that shouldn't, in and of itself, have been all that provocative. My Chemical Romance, she suggested, was "this generation's Nirvana"-- the transformative favorite that meant something to millions. The provocative part, I suppose, was what came around that: a needling argument that the music press was run by out-of-touch 35-year-old guys who couldn't remotely hope to understand teenagers or a band like My Chemical Romance, and were hopelessly irrelevant as a result... As a rhetorical ploy, the argument felt a little too cheap and juvenile-- that great stubborn teenage move where one pretends adults are simply unable to understand the first thing about being human. In reality, a lot of older people's antipathy toward the kinds of bands she championed stemmed from thinking they understood the stuff all too well, having sifted through piles of angsty power chords and snotty pop-punk through the whole 1990s alt-rock gold-rush-- little of which seemed all that meaningful to anyone lately."

every time I go into a magazine store and look at the music mag section (which isn't as often as it used to be) i pick'n'flick through Alternative Press. I used to write a bit for AP, back in the late 90s when the review section was edited by Dave Segal (now at the Stranger) and it covered all the cool stuff of that time (so i'd do short reviews of drum'n'bass comps and digital hardcore CDs and so forth, and others would review post-rock, industrial, ambient, IDM, lo-fi etc). A mix somewhere between The Wire and what Pitchfork now covers. Even then there was a discernible gulf between the superhip review section and the more bread-and-butter feature-oriented main body of the magazine. But for most of the last decade AP has been a different beast altogether, it's all about the kind of emo/pop-punk/gothy-whatnot/non-extreme metal that Nitsuh's talking about. It barely intersects with the Pitchfork world (or even the Spin world). Basically the reason I flick thru AP is sheer fascination at the number of bands I've never even heard of but who appear to be, for some (who knows how many), stars.

From a Retromania-perspective, the interest of emo and post-2000 pop-punk and glammy/Gothy/lite-metally whatever is that it represents a sizeable musical cohort with whom the notion of Innovation seems to have little traction. This doesn't mean the music doesn't change: i daresay if you placed an emo record from 2012 next to one from 1998, there would be some differences, probably apparent even to a listener such as myself with minimal "competence" (in the semiologist sense of ability to "read" a sign-set). But these changes occur without much in the way of intent or purposive will on the part of the bands, I suspect, and probably owe far more to "scenius" type mechanisms, incremental and anonymous shifts driven by recording technology, economics, and then the basic level of competitio nbetween bands to sound slightly different (but not too different) in other to stand out in a crowded field. Innovation is not much of a priority, or even a criteria in this cultural field; things like energy, passion, integrity, lyrics, etc are.

Not forgetting looks and, er, style.

There's a lot of genres in music--more and more, maybe--that undergo change in that slow, anonymous, non-ideological way. So e.g. country in 2012 is nothing like country in 1960 or 1980. In terms of the substance of its sound, it actually sounds like the stodgiest aspects of radio rock (of the Bryan Adams/Tom Cochrane/Mellencamp/Petty/Hootie type) sung with a Southern accent. But these changes came about slowly as a result of demographics and radio and the gradual divorce of most of its audience from any kind of rural existence.